NewzVille Health Desk
Metagenomics is the scientific study of the genetic information of a mixture of organisms in a sample. It’s often used to study microorganisms in soil, water, or in humans.
The United Kingdom (UK) has taken efforts to use pathogen genomics to improve health security. On Thursday the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) launched a world’s first metagenomics initiative to aid in the rapid detection of infectious diseases that could threaten the UK. The metagenomics Surveillance Collaboration and Analysis Programme (mSCAPE), which has been in development over the last year, is piloting the use of metagenomic data for public health surveillance and pathogen analysis.
The programme is a collaborative initiative, led by UKHSA and involving a consortium of NHS and academic partners including the University of Birmingham, University of Edinburgh, and the NHS Clinical Respiratory Metagenomics Network led by Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
UKHSA will take anonymous pathogen data from multiple labs that are using metagenomics for diagnosis, including those in the NHS, and analyse it at a national level to monitor trends, epidemiology and pathogen emergence at speed.
This will allow for assessment of the ability to significantly improve identification of new outbreaks as well as enabling the source of an outbreak to be better understood, predictions to be made about the effectiveness of potential treatments, and any concerning mutations can be identified.
Effective use of metagenomic data will add a new, crucial insight to current health protection surveillance systems in the UK.
mSCAPE aims to develop the capability to use this data as part of UKHSA’s ongoing surveillance of new and emerging infections, pathogens of pandemic potential, and to monitor the evolution of pathogens that cause disease.
Metagenomic methodology allows for untargeted sequencing of patient samples for the presence of pathogenic viruses and bacteria, which is a significant step forward in detection and diagnosis abilities.
Traditional genomic methodologies have required scientists to target sample sequencing towards pathogens that are already known to the scientific and medical community. Pathogen-agnostic metagenomic methods do not require scientists to know for sure what pathogens are present in a sample before the sequencing is conducted.
This is a major advantage in the detection of known but unexpected pathogens for which specific tests are not readily available and for pathogens not normally found in humans.
It is also beneficial in the event of the emergence of a previously unknown novel pathogen.  Metagenomic sequencing is becoming established as a clinical diagnostic test.
